Next: Genesis 2
I warned you. And then I warned you again.
So here I am unloading my study Q&A on Genesis in general, and then on Genesis 1. Feedback welcome. Read this to learn what I am up to and what I am trying to accomplish.
General Questions
Who wrote Genesis? Or, given that the traditional answer is that Moses wrote the whole Pentateuch, what are we to make of criticisms of this?
If you believe the Bible itself, then you believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, because it says so; Jesus attributes authorship of the Pentateuch to Moses: “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.” (John 5:46) The apostles also said as much. The Documentary Hypothesis, which attributes different texts within the Genesis (and the Pentateuch as a whole) to different sources, which were cobbled together, has a number of well-known problems. Since my focus in this Q&A commentary is exposition rather than apologetics or critical analysis, I will say no more.
Why does it matter—if it does matter—that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch?
It matters because it goes to the very heart of the question whether the Bible can be believed. The Bible gets whatever authority it carries from the fact that it is the word of God, and it claims to be the word of God in significant part because that very word was communicated by God himself directly to Moses, who, as the text says, was instructed to write it down. As the ground of the Bible’s supposed credibility, there are no more important doctrines than these. If Moses did not write the Pentateuch, the Bible loses its credibility. The Pentateuch generally gets its authority not because of some priestly traditions (as the Documentary Hypothesis says), but because it was authored by Moses, with whom God himself spoke and to whom he even dictated. If Moses did not get this law from God, and did not write it down himself, and if instead it was written down later by later priests who were frankly lying about the nature of their real source—indeed, some would have to have lied, because they would have invented some words that they deliberately intended to pass off as Moses’ own—then why believe the rest of this tradition, which is lying about something so foundational and deeply important? If the Pentateuch is unreliable, then the rest comes tumbling down like a house of cards.
What is the function of Genesis 1?
There is, as one commentator pointed out, a polemic at work in Genesis 1. This polemic does not aim to undermine modern science, of course—but instead ancient pagan religions. Genesis stands against ancient religions that taught that different gods were responsible for different pieces of the creation, that some were champions of chaos and evil, that matter pre-existed the gods, that the gods were limited, had foibles, and were even mortal. Only one divine personage matters here, and it is not the highest god of some pantheon. It is the god with a capital “g,” God himself, El Shaddai, God Almighty—named Lord, or Yahweh, i.e., he whose essence is to exist, and whose existence is sovereign. The text, qua polemic, replaced pantheons of capricious and deeply flawed gods with a single all-powerful creator god.
First Day: Creation and Light
Prefatory note—I do not plan to ask quite this many questions about later chapters, but this one is particularly important, one or perhaps two orders of magnitude more important than later chapters, and it presents all sorts of intriguing and puzzling claims and issues. So the extra space seems well worth it.
Why is the plural form of the Hebrew word אֱלֹהִ֔ים, or elohim, employed for “God” (e.g., Gen. 1:1) and why is a pluralized word meaning “in our image” (בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ, betzalmenu) used (1:26), if “the LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4)?
A common and traditional explanation is theological: this is because the Holy Spirit and Jesus were part of the Godhead, and it was, apparently, acceptable to refer to the Godhead using the plural. While true enough, it does not seem this is why the plural was used here, because the author of this text presumably did not believe in a trinitarian Godhead and hence not intend to refer to one. But perhaps the author was inspired to use the plural, for reasons he himself did not quite understand. Another traditional explanation, however, is possible: this was what is called in Hebrew grammar the emphatic plural or the plural of majesty. By using the plural form (for the noun) with singular verb forms, the author conveys particular respect or emphasis. So this was not any old god; it was God.
Of course, plenty of other texts in the Old Testament make the latter statement obviously true. So, apparently, calling God “elohim” was a way of reverently magnifying him. What did God create first, precisely?
As the text says, he created “the heaven and the earth.” This is a phrase that Sailhamer calls a hendiadys—a unitary concept formed out of two words conjoined with “and”—to mean the entire universe. This does not mean that he first created everything in all its glory and detail, because in the very next sentence, he says the earth that he just created was “without form, and void.” Also, see the next question.
God is said to create the heaven and the earth in Gen. 1:1, and yet he creates “heaven” in 1:6-8 and “dry land” or earth in 1:9-10. Is this a contradiction?
No. There are various ways of explaining this, but the way that makes most sense to me is that what is created is neither heaven in the sense of the sky (which does not appear until the second day, Gen. 1:6) nor earth in the sense of dry land (which does not appear until the third day, 1:9). So what is it? We are told its features, or rather, its lack of features: it is “without form, and void,” it is described as “the deep,” which has “waters” that are evidently not gathered-together “seas” (such seas do not appear, with the dry land, until the third day, 1:10). Indeed, the very fact that “waters” need to be separated from “waters” in order to make a “firmament” or expanse, which is only then (second day, 1:8) to be called “heaven” or “sky,” means that the initial “heaven and earth” are very strange and primordial indeed. Hence, to say that God created “the heaven and the earth” is simply to say that God created the universe. It is possible that we should interpret “heaven” here to mean the spiritual dwelling-place of God, but presumably that existed well before the material universe or “earth” in that sense (this is discussed more below).
But is Gen. 1:1 to be translated as part of an adverbial phrase or as an independent main clause?
In other words, is it “God created” or is it “When God created, …” with either Gen. 1:2 or 1:3 the consequent of “when”? In the first case, God created a primordial universe, then structured and filled it; in the second case, God created a complete universe, and thereafter that previously good universe was reduced to chaos—as if there were a “gap” between 1:1 and 1:2. This is a common theory, but, without getting into the tedious details, there is nothing in the text to support it. For one thing, “when” does not appear in the text. Moreover, the notion that God would begin with an unshaped, empty universe makes excellent sense considering that the rest of Genesis 1, he is shaping and filling the universe.
So did God create the universe ex nihilo in Gen. 1:1, according to the Bible? What reason is there to think so?
Yes, although perhaps the text does not say so in a way that would satisfy a critical philosopher on the point. The argument, briefly stated, is theological: the first sentence of the Bible is, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Is there anything other than the heaven and the earth? The author doubtless did not think so; and if so, then this statement amounts to saying that God created everything there was to create. Peter in Acts 4:24 is perhaps more explicit on this point: “Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that is in them”. Even more pointed is a verse that Grudem rightly makes much of in this connection: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” (Heb. 11:3) Unless the author here is saying—as he very probably is not—that visible things are made out of invisible things, this implies that all visible things are made ex nihilo.
What word is used for “create” in Gen. 1:1 and why does it matter?
The word in Gen. 1:1 for “created,” בָּרָ֣א or bara, is used here, while in other contexts, a word meaning “made,” וַיַּ֣עַשׂ or wayyasas, is used. The distinction appears to be that between creating out of nothing and assembling out of pre-existing parts—between originating and transforming. Basically, God is said to bara things out of nothing, while he wayyasas them by assembling them from pre-existing things.
I warned you. And then I warned you again.
So here I am unloading my study Q&A on Genesis in general, and then on Genesis 1. Feedback welcome. Read this to learn what I am up to and what I am trying to accomplish.
General Questions
Who wrote Genesis? Or, given that the traditional answer is that Moses wrote the whole Pentateuch, what are we to make of criticisms of this?
If you believe the Bible itself, then you believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, because it says so; Jesus attributes authorship of the Pentateuch to Moses: “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.” (John 5:46) The apostles also said as much. The Documentary Hypothesis, which attributes different texts within the Genesis (and the Pentateuch as a whole) to different sources, which were cobbled together, has a number of well-known problems. Since my focus in this Q&A commentary is exposition rather than apologetics or critical analysis, I will say no more.
Why does it matter—if it does matter—that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch?
It matters because it goes to the very heart of the question whether the Bible can be believed. The Bible gets whatever authority it carries from the fact that it is the word of God, and it claims to be the word of God in significant part because that very word was communicated by God himself directly to Moses, who, as the text says, was instructed to write it down. As the ground of the Bible’s supposed credibility, there are no more important doctrines than these. If Moses did not write the Pentateuch, the Bible loses its credibility. The Pentateuch generally gets its authority not because of some priestly traditions (as the Documentary Hypothesis says), but because it was authored by Moses, with whom God himself spoke and to whom he even dictated. If Moses did not get this law from God, and did not write it down himself, and if instead it was written down later by later priests who were frankly lying about the nature of their real source—indeed, some would have to have lied, because they would have invented some words that they deliberately intended to pass off as Moses’ own—then why believe the rest of this tradition, which is lying about something so foundational and deeply important? If the Pentateuch is unreliable, then the rest comes tumbling down like a house of cards.
What is the function of Genesis 1?
There is, as one commentator pointed out, a polemic at work in Genesis 1. This polemic does not aim to undermine modern science, of course—but instead ancient pagan religions. Genesis stands against ancient religions that taught that different gods were responsible for different pieces of the creation, that some were champions of chaos and evil, that matter pre-existed the gods, that the gods were limited, had foibles, and were even mortal. Only one divine personage matters here, and it is not the highest god of some pantheon. It is the god with a capital “g,” God himself, El Shaddai, God Almighty—named Lord, or Yahweh, i.e., he whose essence is to exist, and whose existence is sovereign. The text, qua polemic, replaced pantheons of capricious and deeply flawed gods with a single all-powerful creator god.
First Day: Creation and Light
Prefatory note—I do not plan to ask quite this many questions about later chapters, but this one is particularly important, one or perhaps two orders of magnitude more important than later chapters, and it presents all sorts of intriguing and puzzling claims and issues. So the extra space seems well worth it.
Why is the plural form of the Hebrew word אֱלֹהִ֔ים, or elohim, employed for “God” (e.g., Gen. 1:1) and why is a pluralized word meaning “in our image” (בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ, betzalmenu) used (1:26), if “the LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4)?
A common and traditional explanation is theological: this is because the Holy Spirit and Jesus were part of the Godhead, and it was, apparently, acceptable to refer to the Godhead using the plural. While true enough, it does not seem this is why the plural was used here, because the author of this text presumably did not believe in a trinitarian Godhead and hence not intend to refer to one. But perhaps the author was inspired to use the plural, for reasons he himself did not quite understand. Another traditional explanation, however, is possible: this was what is called in Hebrew grammar the emphatic plural or the plural of majesty. By using the plural form (for the noun) with singular verb forms, the author conveys particular respect or emphasis. So this was not any old god; it was God.
Of course, plenty of other texts in the Old Testament make the latter statement obviously true. So, apparently, calling God “elohim” was a way of reverently magnifying him. What did God create first, precisely?
As the text says, he created “the heaven and the earth.” This is a phrase that Sailhamer calls a hendiadys—a unitary concept formed out of two words conjoined with “and”—to mean the entire universe. This does not mean that he first created everything in all its glory and detail, because in the very next sentence, he says the earth that he just created was “without form, and void.” Also, see the next question.
God is said to create the heaven and the earth in Gen. 1:1, and yet he creates “heaven” in 1:6-8 and “dry land” or earth in 1:9-10. Is this a contradiction?
No. There are various ways of explaining this, but the way that makes most sense to me is that what is created is neither heaven in the sense of the sky (which does not appear until the second day, Gen. 1:6) nor earth in the sense of dry land (which does not appear until the third day, 1:9). So what is it? We are told its features, or rather, its lack of features: it is “without form, and void,” it is described as “the deep,” which has “waters” that are evidently not gathered-together “seas” (such seas do not appear, with the dry land, until the third day, 1:10). Indeed, the very fact that “waters” need to be separated from “waters” in order to make a “firmament” or expanse, which is only then (second day, 1:8) to be called “heaven” or “sky,” means that the initial “heaven and earth” are very strange and primordial indeed. Hence, to say that God created “the heaven and the earth” is simply to say that God created the universe. It is possible that we should interpret “heaven” here to mean the spiritual dwelling-place of God, but presumably that existed well before the material universe or “earth” in that sense (this is discussed more below).
But is Gen. 1:1 to be translated as part of an adverbial phrase or as an independent main clause?
In other words, is it “God created” or is it “When God created, …” with either Gen. 1:2 or 1:3 the consequent of “when”? In the first case, God created a primordial universe, then structured and filled it; in the second case, God created a complete universe, and thereafter that previously good universe was reduced to chaos—as if there were a “gap” between 1:1 and 1:2. This is a common theory, but, without getting into the tedious details, there is nothing in the text to support it. For one thing, “when” does not appear in the text. Moreover, the notion that God would begin with an unshaped, empty universe makes excellent sense considering that the rest of Genesis 1, he is shaping and filling the universe.
So did God create the universe ex nihilo in Gen. 1:1, according to the Bible? What reason is there to think so?
Yes, although perhaps the text does not say so in a way that would satisfy a critical philosopher on the point. The argument, briefly stated, is theological: the first sentence of the Bible is, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Is there anything other than the heaven and the earth? The author doubtless did not think so; and if so, then this statement amounts to saying that God created everything there was to create. Peter in Acts 4:24 is perhaps more explicit on this point: “Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that is in them”. Even more pointed is a verse that Grudem rightly makes much of in this connection: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” (Heb. 11:3) Unless the author here is saying—as he very probably is not—that visible things are made out of invisible things, this implies that all visible things are made ex nihilo.
What word is used for “create” in Gen. 1:1 and why does it matter?
The word in Gen. 1:1 for “created,” בָּרָ֣א or bara, is used here, while in other contexts, a word meaning “made,” וַיַּ֣עַשׂ or wayyasas, is used. The distinction appears to be that between creating out of nothing and assembling out of pre-existing parts—between originating and transforming. Basically, God is said to bara things out of nothing, while he wayyasas them by assembling them from pre-existing things.
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